American forces on Saturday detained 33 people in raids against Al-Qaeda and affiliates of the network in Iraq and around Baghdad, the military said. Twenty suspects were deatined outside Tarmiya, north of the capital, on suspicion of colluding with an alleged local Al-Qaeda emir, it said.

The Americans accused his network of training female suicide bombers, abductions and carrying out car bomb attacks rigged with chlorine.

The other 13 suspects were detained in Baghdad, the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, Tarmiya and the oil refinery town of Bayji during operations targeting other local Al-Qaeda warlords, the US military said, according to AFP.

American forces also killed four armed men and called in an air strike to destroy a weapons cache during a pre-dawn raid in Qasirin, in the Diyala province not far from Tarmiya, the American military said.

The target of the raid were gunmen suspected of coordinating supply lines from Iran to Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army and other gunmen, the U.S. military said.